430
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 599 (1996) (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., dissenting)). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Justice Ginsburg, dissenting.
Not long ago, this Court was hesitant to impose a federal check on state-court judgments awarding punitive damages. In Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257 (1989), the Court held that neither the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment nor federal common law circumscribed awards of punitive damages in civil cases between private parties. Id., at 262-276, 277- 280. Two years later, in Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 1 (1991), the Court observed that "unlimited jury [or judicial] discretion . . . in the fixing of punitive damages may invite extreme results that jar one's constitutional sensibilities," id., at 18; the Due Process Clause, the Court suggested, would attend to those sensibilities and guard against unreasonable awards, id., at 17-24. Nevertheless, the Court upheld a punitive damages award in Haslip "more than 4 times the amount of compensatory damages, . . . more than 200 times [the plaintiff's] out-of-pocket expenses," and "much in excess of the fine that could be imposed." Id., at 23. And in TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp., 509 U. S. 443 (1993), the Court affirmed a state-court award "526 times greater than the actual damages awarded by the jury." Id., at 453; 1 cf. Browning-Ferris, 492 U. S., at 262 (ratio of punitive to compensatory damages over 100 to 1).
It was not until 1996, in BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, that the Court, for the first time, invalidated a state-court punitive damages assessment as un-1 By switching the focus from the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages to the potential loss to the plaintiffs had the defendant succeeded in its illicit scheme, the Court could describe the relevant ratio in TXO as 10 to 1. See BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 581, and n. 34 (1996).
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